The rejection of the world's fulfillment in a literal messianic kingdom--the reduction to the stark alternatives of a sin-and-misery soaked world and a Heaven of disembodied spirits--has led to the rejection of the latter and the attempted transformation of the former by humanistic schemes (Communism, etc.).
G-d created the world to be fulfilled. Our part is to hasten the kingdom by obeying G-d's commandments. Absent this is only an other-worldly quietism or a militant crusading secularism.
I will stand with you ZC.
In my studies, I have found that the first thing to throw away is the theory of replacementism, that the Church has replaced Israel. In order to remove Israel from the Prophecy the 'symbolic', 'spiritual' Israel had to be constructed. But the Prophecy is clear. Israel, in her two Great Houses, Judah and Ephraim, remains the instrument of Jehovah's work on this earth.
Without the construct of replacementism, the 'literal vs. spiritual' argument largely disappears, and the words of the OT and NT can be reconciled. That reconciliation does not allow for anything but a literal reign of Christ from the literal throne of David, in the literal Jerusalem, on the literal planet of Earth.
G-d created the world to be fulfilled. Our part is to hasten the kingdom by obeying G-d’s commandments. Absent this is only an other-worldly quietism or a militant crusading secularism.
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GOOD POINTS, imho